


what the water gave me

by illegible



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M, Horror, Romance, folktale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25994797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/pseuds/illegible
Summary: “Why do all our folktales involve water monsters?” the Warrior asks as she sits on the shore of the sea.
Relationships: Elidibus/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	what the water gave me

**Author's Note:**

> Some of my favorite works over the years have drawn titles from this song. I guess it's my turn.

“Why do all our folktales involve water monsters?” the Warrior asks as she sits on the shore of the sea. 

_Ah,_ says the serpent in mortal flesh, this Emissary to a dead kingdom at her side. His clothes lie shed like layers of skin around them. _So you finally chose to ask after all._

He is warm, and dry, and she finds that grains of sand stick to him no less than they do her. Night throws its cloak across the sky, waves whisper black before them, and overhead the moon pays witness in an eye unblinking. 

_We were not born from the depths,_ he tells her softly, _and there was a time when we trusted they were tame. Our children would play in the shallows no different than yours do today. Though the ocean had never birthed them, nonetheless it would share its secret things. Shells. Coral. The fossilized remains of beasts. And our children, being young and foolish as yours are now, did not consider these warnings but treasures. They failed to remember their trophies had once been alive._

_We were blind. Trusting. Unprepared when the water rose to covet that which it did not yet possess. You may find it difficult to imagine how heaven burned, my little Warrior, our skies set ablaze as they were. Smoke seared our lungs, darkened our homes. Lit the clouds with an infernal light._

_But the sea, too, betrayed us._

_It boiled, it writhed, it stole away all who strayed too close pleading shelter. There was no mercy to be found._

His voice is nigh a whisper now, tongue silvered between his lips. She hears the swell and sigh of his lungs within him and imagines it surprisingly delicate, for all the strength needed to endure. 

_We were, in so little time, consumed. This you have learned well enough by now. Three remained to lament the skeletal husk of that city. And age after age we saw the current swell, could not bring ourselves to abandon the corpse that had once been our home._

_Your kind watched us drown slowly without noticing._

_Of my kin, you left a speaker silenced as the tide overwhelmed. As strength fled his limbs and words dissolved entirely—final moments spent reaching for a surface just beyond him. You met and slew our king of the dead, stained in brine with his court of phantoms. They danced together amidst wreckage none could bear to admit._

_And I yet remain._

She hears his heart, soft and steady. She shuts her eyes, ear-to-chest, and imagines his life encompasses a world unbroken. 

_The water will take me too, my Warrior. And if I do not snatch you away, know that its gaze will turn next upon your home._

_You tell of beasts moving through the deep because the truth has always been so much worse._

_The sea hungers, heart of mine. And in the end none of us can escape._


End file.
